the space between the stars
by bethejerktomybitch
Summary: Everything must end, of course, and so this collision of stars ends too, and Natasha doesn't particularly mind, or at least she tells herself she doesn't, because she's been taught never to look back, but when they drag him off there is a single moment where his eyes meet hers and something deep inside her, in the space where her heart misses a beat, aches.


Natasha stands on her toes, reaching for air to keep her balance.

"Power is a finite resource." Madame Cordova says, walking through the rows of girls, each one poised just like Natasha, with stiff arms and back and blank faces. "To own it you must take it. To make a better world you must take it from those who do not deserve to have it. It is a game, a game we are all striving to win."

She comes to a stop in front of a girl whose name is Yulia. There's a single bead of sweat glistening on her forehead, bright as a diamond under the neon lights above. _Weakness,_ Natasha thinks, and she can see her thought echoed in the eyes of the girls around her, a predator's instinct sharpened by need, because that's what they are, predators, that's why the Red Room picked them in the first place.

Madame Cordova runs her long, white finger along Yulia's cheek. The girl stands motionless, but her face betrays her fear, and her fear seals her fate. "Power is a finite resource." Madame Cordova repeats. "You must take it to own it. But if you are just a frightened little girl reaching for things that are too big for you to understand, the ones who hold the power will crush you."

She turns to the girls again. "In the game for power, you can never show weakness. It is the one thing that will always get you killed."

She pauses, takes a breath. The whole room seems to hold its breath, watching, waiting, for what's inevitably coming next. From the corner of her eye, Natasha can see Yulia's eyes roaming the room, desperately searching for someone who will meet her gaze, but no one will, of course no one will, because Yulia is now their weak link, their weakness, and they cannot afford one.

Madame Cordova strikes like a snake. Yulia falls to the ground in a spray of scarlet red, and the woman smiles, teeth glistening. "Take a good look, girls." she says, and they all do, they all stare at the dead girl who was once one of them and now is no more, the girl who was weak when she shouldn't have been. "This is the most important lesson I will ever teach you."

Natasha stands on her toes and feels the blood pulsing through her veins. She is eight years old.

* * *

"In this world" Madame Cordova says, first after Yulia's body is carried away, but many times after that too, so many times Natasha had stopped counting, "men do not fear women. They don't think we have it in us to take their power away. So they get careless around us. They show us weaknesses they would never show other men. And you, girls, you will take these weaknesses and use them."

Natasha thinks of one of the movies they watch at bedtime – a herd of zebras, a pack of lionesses, picking out the weakest one, drawing it away from the herd, circling it in, drenching the savannah in its blood – and knows she is supposed to be the lioness, but under Madame Cordova's cold gaze she can't help but feel like a zebra.

And so, when she gets her first assignment, she jumps at the opportunity to have someone else be the zebra, to be the lioness that strikes her prey with deadly precision.

The man never sees her coming.

* * *

When they first bring Yasha in, there are only five girls left – Natasha, Yelena, Valeriya, Oksana and Evgeniya.

Of course, she doesn't know then that his name is Yasha, and neither does he. He is a tool without a name, a weapon, and maybe that is why can't spot any weaknesses in him, because he isn't really a man, not anymore, not after Hydra did whatever they did to him. She can feel his eyes on her as soon as he enters the room, and she knows what he's doing, he's looking for her weaknesses, and that is also something Madame Cordova told them men would never do, and so from the very start, she doesn't know what to think of him.

Yelena fights against him first, then Natasha, and she loses – which is new too, because she can count the fights she's lost on one hand. The fingers of his metal hand wrap around her throat and Natasha knows he could kill her with a flick of his wrist, but she isn't scared, and so she only looks at him and he looks at her and they are locked in the space of a single elongated second until Madame Cordova ends the fight with her sharp voice.

"You favor your left." he tells her, much later, after many fights just like this first one, in a low voice. His unspoken _it's your weakness_ hangs heavy in the air, but strangely Natasha doesn't mind at all, and she wonders if this is what trust feels like.

Trust is a weakness too, this is what Madame Cordova likes to say, no one can be trusted, not with something that can hurt you, but Natasha thinks of the lionesses who hunt in packs and of Oksana who didn't tell anyone that Natasha woke up with wet cheeks after Yulia died, and she isn't sure she believes Madame Cordova's words.

In the darkness of her room, she tells him that her name is Natalia, and he doesn't smile but there is a curving of his lips when he says "James" and she whispers "Yasha", and then their bodies collide like two stars would, burning hot and bright and fast.

* * *

Everything must end, of course, and so this collision of stars ends too, and Natasha doesn't particularly mind, or at least she tells herself she doesn't, because she's been taught never to look back – _you cannot change the past,_ _Natalia, you can only shape the future,_ Madame Cordova used to say to her when Natasha had just come to the Red Room – but when they drag him off there is a single moment where his eyes meet hers and something deep inside her, in the space where her heart, that treacherous thing, misses a beat, aches.

She holds his gaze because looking away would be a sign of weakness, and weakness is something she can never afford to show, not in a world where power is the only currency that counts. And Yasha, he holds her gaze too, as if this is a game of who will blink first, a battle for power, but it isn't, it never can be, because they aren't the ones who hold the power in this wretched, twisted world.

It's people like Madame Cordova who really have power, who really have something to lose, while people like her and Yasha can only ever reach for it, can only ever pretend to have it in what limited freedom they're given.

Years later, Natasha realizes that this, this yearning for power, is what makes her both weak and strong, because unlike those who have everything, she has nothing to lose, and so when she stands over Madame Cordova's body she reaches out and closes her eyes and thinks _you blinked first, and now all the power is mine._

* * *

In the world that comes after, after the Red Room, after Madame Cordova, after Yasha, things are so much more complicated than they were before, and Natasha both hates and loves it.

She always knew that the world wasn't black and white, she always knew it was painted in shades of grey, but when she was still Natalia Romanova, the black widow, it wasn't in her power to decide which shade was hers. Now she is Natasha Romanoff, agent of SHIELD, and names have power too, they make you a different person – in her mind, the winter soldier and Yasha are two entirely different people – and the person she is now balances a fine line on the edge of the grey, but a line that is hers, and that is all she asks.

It takes time, but she puts her trust in Clint, and she puts her trust in the Steve, and though it scares her to death sometimes, it feels good to trust people. Although, maybe, her definition of trust is flawed, because she never tells either of them about her past, she never tells either of them what happened in the Red Room, she never tells them about Yulia or Madame Cordova or the weaknesses in herself.

And when Nick Fury, and man whom she didn't trust but cared about in some way, is shot by a man with a metal arm and Steve asks her what she knows, she thinks _Yasha,_ thinks _mine,_ thinks _everything,_ but says "nothing", and the lie leaves her tongue all too easily.

* * *

Everything must end. All empires must fall. That is the lesson that Natasha, above all, learned in the Red Room. But in the time after, she learns that there is something that comes after the fall, after the end.

And so SHIELD falls, and Natasha survives this particular end too, like she survived the end of her childhood and the end of Yulia and the end of Madame Cordova. She drifts for a while, learns to live with the fact that her entire history, everything Hydra had on her, is now out there, all her weaknesses exposed – though maybe not all of them, because she checked, there was nothing about her and Yasha – and she meets him in Romania, by what is probably chance but feels like fate.

He looks different, like there was a weight on his shoulders that was taken away, but there is no recognition in his eyes, and that is one of the few moments Natasha is truly scared, scared that he won't remember her, scared that she is the only one who remembers what happened between them, and so it might as well not have happened at all, but then he gives her his not-smile and says "Natalia" and she says "Yasha", and the space between the stars explodes.


End file.
